Disclaimer: One Piece is the property of Eiichiro Oda. Many of the characters in this story are property of me. Do not use this story or its characters without my permission. Thank you.


Bard was so suddenly awake that he forgot to breathe and stood up with a gasping shout. His face was drenched in water and his mouth tasted salty and gritty. He didn't know how long he'd been out or who was around him immediately upon waking. In the bright streaks of light across the cloudy, gray sky, Bard could only manage to see the shadowy forms of men carrying weapons and buckets of water his way. He thought he heard a voice call to him, but an instant later he was bogged with more water thrown from a bucket by one of his own men.

"Oh, he's awake" Rez said as he held the emptied bucket right over his head. "I was having fun, too."

"Seventeen" Zan said. "He's a heavy sleeper, isn't he?" Zan chuckled and hopped up off his seat. He paced over and leaned down to offer Bard a hand up. Bard took it and was pulled to his feet as Zan sank to his ankles into the ground. "You almost pulled me down, captain. Glad to see your strength hasn't waned at all." Zan gave him a hearty, strong handshake and pulled his feet from the ground to dash across the grounds. Bard watched him run. On his way to a hole in the courtyard wall some length away from the wrecked and ruined bleachers, Zan picked up a staff with a bludgeon hammer equipped to the end and ran with it into battle.

"Hey" Bard said, his head still swimming and light. "Hey, what's going on?"

"Civil revolt" Rez said. "Now that you're awake we can stop defending you and start fighting back!"

"Against who?" Bard asked.

"The villagers" Kurateka answered. Bard turned to her with a start, as he never remembered seeing her before.

"Who're you!?" he asked in distress.

"I'm the doctor" Kurateka answered. Bard's heart swelled. A beaming smile grew across his eager face and his eyes sparkled with joy.

"You're" Bard began, leaning forward with anxious intensity, "you're my crew's doctor!?"

"Oh-hoho!" Kurateka chuckled. "I don't think so. I'm merely doing my duty and healing the ailed and injured here."

"We tried to get her to join" one of the pirates, bandaged and sprawled on a blanket, "but she kept refusing. She's a stubborn old gal! HURK!!!" Kurateka stood on top of him to check his IV drip, right on his heavily bandaged abdomen. He groaned and reeled in pain until she got off and paced her way over to Bard with a syringe in her hand. Bard hopped away and became cautious, as well as light-headed and pudding-legged. He fell down and clutched his head, breathing heavy, dry breaths from the ground.

"Don't worry" Kura said as she took Bard's arm, slinging it under her armpit to get a solid grip on the heavy, powerful arm. She found a vein instantly and filled it with a clear, clean liquid that warmed Bard's arm and soon thereafter his body. "This will give you enough energy to move around for a while, but only that. Don't try fighting until I've given you a go-ahead, and don't do anything particularly strenuous like training."

"Awwwww" Bard groaned in dejection. "But how will I keep my muscles from being absorbed into my body by my hyper-active metabolism?"

"You're metabolism isn't that hyper" Kura said as she stood him up. "And amazingly, even though you were out for so long, your muscles haven't deteriorated in the slightest. In fact, I think I can see some added build to them as you slept."

"That's good" Bard said.

"I had to dilute pure liquid protein after adding so much of it to your natural saline drip became ineffective" Kura said in a frustrated way. "Your stomach was constantly growling without proper food so I had to do my part and gave your body an abundance of natural minerals, starches, proteins and vitamins. You never missed a thing while you were out."

"I missed combat" Bard said with his head to the sky. "That...is the greaetest disappointment I've ever had upon waking...."

"Granted" Kura said, crossing her arms, "it's combat against the villagers."

"EH!?" Bard grunted. His jaw had dropped halfway down his neck and his eyes were furrowed over with a dark shadow. "Why're they fighting the villagers!? Did my crew mutiny on me!?"

"The villagers they're fighting" Kura said "aren't the one's you last saw. Your pirates helped give them back their life as human beings, and in return, they hold the grudge of the death of their king strongly against your comrades. A very ungrateful bunch, if you ask me...."

"Ungrateful or not" Reginald said as he stepped into scene, "they're getting a little stronger every day!"

"Hi Drakengard" Bard greeted with a casual wave. Reginald tapped his halberd blade against his forehead in salute and grinned.

"So has the doctor been good to you?" he asked, turning to Kura who bashfully averted her bandage-hidden face to the side.

"Of course I have" she said forcefully. "He's just woken up, however, so I've barred him from any strenuous activity that may impede his natural healing cycle while he's awake."

"Really?" Reginald said. "No fighting? No combat at all? That's a pity. Those villagers are all riled up out there. They're calling for your head, 'Blonde Demon King'."

"AWWWWW!!!" Bard howled in exasperation as he fell to his knees with curling fingers grabbing at the sky. "I even got a kick-ass name given in hatred! I'm finally a pirate but I can't go out and fight! It's not fair! It's not faaaair!" Bard sunk his head and curled his arms around his legs as he fell on his side to the ground. ".....not fair...." he whimpered. Kura looked up at the gape-mouthed Reginald.

"The side effect of the medicine is the onset of emotional instability" she explained. Reginald nodded and grinned in understanding.

"So" he said, tapping his spear against the ground. "You're really certain about your decision? I intend to get off this island eventually, after I get some semblance of order and sanity among the villagers, but you shouldn't feel so obligated to stay just because you worked here."

"....it's not that" Kura said. "I'd like to go, but I fear that.....I'd just get in their way. This isn't just a crew of pillagers or random pirates, they're a closer-knit army than any ordinary crew is. It's almost like they're a family, and I...."

"You think you're too old for them?" Reginald asked. She glowered her whited-out blue eye at him and held up a syringe clutched between her fingers. "These people let me into their fair family just long enough to make use of my power, but I didn't complain. So far I see that they have no intention of letting me leave. They've asked me a thousand times over each to join their crew, but each time of my own accord I've declined them. They are adventurers, these men, out to see great sights and fight great battles. Is seeing and believing really too hard for a young-hearted girl like you, Kura?" Kurateka blinked at him, then lowered her head in thought. Bard had rolled away from them and was sifting among the rubble of the bleachers in a depressing boredom. Kura clenched her fists, unable to speak, and simply turned her attention to her row of patients.

"I'll consider it further" she said, "but for now I'm busy, and I'd like to work without interruptions or distractions, so if you'd be so kind as to-" When she looked up to dismiss him, Reginald was already gone. She sighed and wiped a tear away from her completely bandaged eye, an entirely symbolic act, knowing she couldn't prevent a tear from that eye be unseen as it left a wet mark on her bandages...


A day of fighting was done. This time the villagers left in high spirits with pumped vigor and muscular strides. The men with backs so wide the seams of their shirts were pulled and breaking carried two armful stacks of injured and immobile at a time. Even the women managed to carry two or more men on their shoulders, as well as most of the arms, as they made their way back to their village.

"We kicked ASS!!!" a young man said as he carried six groaning infantrymen.

"Those blasted demons!" a girl shouted as she hauled a cart full of arms pulled by a rope tied around her powerfully taught neck. She slammed her fist into her palm and ground it with a sly grin and laugh. "We showed them who not to mess with! Us! Those bastards!"

"Swear word!" an older man shouted randomly.

"I'm still so pumped" another man said, drooping his haggard face and yawning loudly. "But man, I'm tired. Anyone else really tired?"

"I'm still pumped!" the young man with arms full declared.

"Me too!" the girl likewise called. "I'm so awake right now, even though the sky's dark and the sun's low and the tide is leaving! It's odd, isn't it? I can remember wanting to sleep for days at a time when it got to be this time after only making two loafs of bread for the day. Now I've done more today than I have in my entire life, and I'm still not tired!! IT'S INCREDIBLE!!!"

"You're awesome!" an older lady said, spinning in place with a dazzling thumb up, then yawning just like the man in the group. "But yeah, I'm kinda tired too. I wonder why."

"I guess we're just too youthful" another young man said. "All us youngsters can stay up late tonight and party to celebrate being such hard-ass warriors while you old geezers fall asleep in your beds!"

"Hey!" An old, balding, bearded man shouted, he with more muscle than most of the other men of his stature and age. "Don't you youngsters mock us for our age! We can kick the ass of anyone half as young as us!"

"You wanna bet!?" the same young man shouted.

"It's a challenge!" the old man demanded. "I'll meet you by the ocean in ten minutes!"

"I'll be doing push-ups to prepare!" the youngster proclaimed, and then he was off. The old man chased after him as the front of the line, running down the hill. Behind them was the rest of their company following, carrying heavy burdens of men and weapons, super-strong from the spontaneous rush of unknown chemicals to their long deprived bodies. Chemical mixtures such as testosterone, adrenaline, endorphins and estrogen. Chemicals they had somehow blandly lived without had suddenly spiked their aggression, strength, musculature and nature. They were the result in the ultimate drug-test, the ultimate social experiment and a living triumph of non-traditional science at work!

Once the band had passed clear out of sight, a cloak-and-hooded figure sprang from the bushes and made a sprinting dash along the dark shade of the trees for cover. The moving shadow hit the castle gate wall with its back and slinked silently along its side, keeping itself hidden by the evening's cloudy darkness, and made its way to the shoddy blockade of woven logs and stacked ruined bricks that kept the villagers at bay for just the minutes the pirates needed to prepare for combat. The figure ducked between the spaces in the logs with grunts and gasps, then, unfortunately, got stuck just as freedom was in sight.

"Ahh!" the figure silently gasped. It attempted to pry loose the logs that had trapped it in by the waist and kicked rapidly, hoping to solve the problem with random bouts of unguided physical force.

"Hey" a patrolling pirate said, pointing over to the intruder. "What's that?"

"Looks like an intruder?" the other pirate on patrol said. "Looks like they're stuck, too." The figure abandoned stealth and started slamming on the thick, hollow logs in anger.

"Stupid logs!" she whispered. "I am not to thick to fit through you, now let me through!" She pushed and pumped with her legs as hard as she could, feeling her skin pull at the tight embrace of the wood, and with a raise of the logs around her hips she was freed and landed hands and knees to the hard, much-trampled dirt. She got up and brushed off her cloak, not noticing the gleaming grins and white eyes of the pirates behind her until she turned with a squeak and was overtaken. She was then carried across the garden and to a tented area where the Buster Pirates had set up their headquarters. A beige tarp was stretched across the branches of two trees and staked to the ground behind them, all supported by ropes and ties that lowered, lengthened and spread out the cover like the pulleys of a sail.

"Intruder, captain" the leading patrol pirate said. He threw the girl to the ground where she coughed and groaned. She rolled onto her right shoulder with a metallic clank and pushed up to her feet with a tired sigh. "What should we do?" The girl looked with a frightful gasp at Bard, who sat in a regal chair missing the upper-right corner of its wood and velvet plush, leaning against his fist with a flat, emotionless look. She was startled into a backwards retreat but was stopped by the pirates who pushed her forward. She opened her hood and revealed her flowing, curly hair which curtained her familiar, soft, beautiful face and bright blue eyes. It was Colleen. Still, the familiarity didn't provoke any shift in emotion for Bard at all.

"Hold on a sec" the pirate said. He reached over from behind Colleen and slapped Bard on the face. Bard blinked rapidly and pushed himself up from the arms of the chair, looking around rapidly as if he'd lost his place.

"How long was I out?" he asked.

"Not long" the other patrol pirate said. "Anyway, here's this girl. What should we do with her?"

"Oh!" Bard exclaimed. He pushed himself up from the chair and bent his knees to get to Colleen's eye level with excited hands and curled up arms. "I know you! You have that thing on your arm, don't you!?"

"Uh...yes?" Colleen said. She revealed her mechanical arm cannon folded back with all the essential firing components solidly fixed together along her tricep muscle. "I'm captain Ramone's first mate, Colleen. We met....briefly, during our fights a few days ago."

"That's right" Bard said as he stood up with a grin. "I remember you....kinda. Well, since I know what crew you're from, I can only assume you have positive intentions here. What's up?"

Shouldn't it be the opposite!? The patrol guards thought together. They looked at each other with their lips curled open and teeth exposed with the flattest, furrowed brow they could simultaneously manage.

"I have a message" she began shyly "from my Captain. He...blames you for everything, for his escape and his defeat and his hopes being dashed and the ruin of his ship, but I know he doesn't mean it. He's so upset because someone else took his revenge that he's not talking right. He just roars and punches trees and.....breaks things all day."

"He's a pretty dangerous guy, alright" Bard said with a nod. "So he hates me now?"

"He wanted me to say" Colleen said, wringing her hands together and stroking the soft, worn bandages that covered her right arm, "that the next time you two meet on the Grand Line, he's going to kill you. He considers you a mortal enemy now, but agreed that he won't approach you on this island anymore....also, he wanted me to give you this..." She held out in her hand a Log Pose pointing solidly in one direction, away from the island. Bard took it in his hand and handed it off to a pirate beside him.

"Give that to Rez" he said. "Tell him we have a new bearing. Also, get me our Log Pose."

"Aye" the pirate said. He rushed off at once.

"So that's it?" Bard said. "All that fighting and I've made a new enemy, rather than a friend?"

"....I'm sorry" Colleen said in a drastic state of worry. "I tried to talk him out of it, I really tried, but he's so insistant and the crew stood behind him and I know I couldn't oppose him outright at all. You don't understand what he's done for me, for all of us. We can't abandon him! We-"

"In that case!" Bard declared, stopping Colleen's frantic rant and drawing her attention up to his grinning, plotting face, "I've got a message for him as well, if you'll deliver it."

"Alright" Colleen said.

"It's a physical message" Bard said. That instant he wound his arm far back with an open palm. Colleen shut her eyes tight and knotted her hands together to brace for the pain. Bard delivered to her cheek a light, painless, startling slap and stayed his hand at her face. She opened her eyes, thinking that her pain had just begun, and saw Bard smiling down at her. "Only do it to him, like, ten times harder. And make sure you say it's my response to his call for rivalry. I think that will give my approval loud and clear!"

".....Uh" Colleen grunted in confusion. She felt her cheek for the pain of a bruise and looked to her chest under her cloak where her right hand was so tightly clenched in fear, and she nodded. "I'll....be sure he gets the message, Bard. Thank you...."

"Yup!" Bard said. Colleen started walking away. She looked back over her shoulder once, then began to walk a bit faster. She finally looked back and waved with a pretty smile and Bard waved back. She turned and saw a pirate running at her with a gift wrapped up in a cloth for protection. He handed her the Buster Pirate's pose, which had yet to set like her Captain's had, and she left. She was helped through the barricade and was gone, off to the swamp to deliver her captain-to-captain message with her own uncertainty. She looked at her fist with wide eyes.

Can I even do that? She wondered. She clenched her fist tight and ran on. I will try...I have to!


Colleen returned to her crew's base, the deserted platform of their former ship, and saw the crew working at their fullest strength. They carried lumber from place to place, some salvage, some fresh from the salt-ridden trees and some stolen from the village supply. Ramone was standing at the bow of the deck platform, looking out past the trees and enjoying the demure sky and quickly-moving tide waters as they swept along the side of the coast with the power to erode away the very roots of the trees that hung out of the dirt.

"Gggggg....." he lowed. Colleen approached him slowly, gathering harsh glares from the rest of the crew as she walked to him. Ramone turned around and reattached the loose left side of his jawbone. Colleen gripped her right arm across her stomach and rubbed it self-consciously.

"....I did it" Colleen said, looking away. "Bard knows now, and he gave me his Log Pose to have in place of our own."

"Of course he did!" Ramone shouted. "He's a boy, and a dim one at that! He's still young and filled with the duplicitous sense of honor and innocence that all pirates eventually get rid of on their first real act of villainy. He's still just a kid, and I intend to fight and kill him as a man, somewhere out on the ocean..." Ramone turned back to the ocean and listened to it swell and rush against the island. Colleen was glad that the message got across without her need to truly deliver it, but she still felt unfulfilled by withholding Bard's more powerful message. She stood for a while in silence, behind her captain in gracious waiting, until the rush of impatience filled her and forced her hand to clench and work the mechanisms to whirr and wrap from her back to her arm.

"He had another message" Colleen said. Ramone growled and turned to her.

"What was it?" he asked. Colleen just stared at the floor while her Hellcat Cannon assembled around her thick-gauzed arm. "Colleen?" Ramone asked. Colleen wound her arm up, stepped forward and twisted her whole body for a full-contact steel punch to Ramone's face. At the first sign of breaking Colleen was convinced that her delivery was much more than ten times the requested strength, and upon Ramone's face breaking apart in waxen shrapnel and shards, she withdrew as much of her attack as she could and sank to the floor in horror. Ramone was limp and dead-looking at first glance. All the work stopped in the woods and the lean, pallor-faced men looked on in speechless shock. Ramone twitched his fingers and ordered his insects from within their hive. He pushed himself up despite the obvious handicap of being headless, and his worker bugs worked rapidly to rebuilt his face and replace his hair with their freshly spun, greasy silk.

"Ggggggg" Ramone growled with his lower-jawless grin. "So....he wants it that way, does he? I suppose I'll have to train a lot harder to force fate into my hands when we meet..." He stood up and rubbed the new, fresh cheek of his face. His hand trailed a sticky mucous from the adhesive spit of his worker drones. Colleen looked at him in awe, a nearly immortal warrior, a true ghost of a man with white rage in his black eyes. "It's WAR! The Buster Pirates are our sworn enemies! We, the Killer Ghost Pirates, will show them the true spirit of piracy in our fighting! We will kill them! We will become a crew of murderous poltergeist! We will appear and disappear in silence and shadow, carrying with us the souls of our enemies!!! NOTHING SHALL STOP US BUT DEATH, WHO WE SHALL MASTER HEREFORTH! ANYONE WHO WANTS TO SCREW WITH US, WE'LL KILL EM!!!!!!"

"RAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!" his crew roared. Colleen was stunned by his charismatic theatrics. He snapped his jaw back into place and licked off the mucous around his new lips with a mad smile.

"Ggggggg" he growled. "I'll show that kid what real power is about on this sea! The Killer Ghost Killer, the 'Lord of the Flies', I'll form the ultimate crew of soulless, deadly, silent assassins and bring terror and fear back to the world!"

"....captain" Colleen whispered in fear. Ramone turned to her with a smile, with lowered brow and relaxed cheeks. While the men cheered for their new eventual revelation into the darkness of becoming assassins, Colleen was truly afraid of her Captain's might and rage. She was even shivering and sweating. He approached her and knelt down to her. She leaned away as he closed in. He brushed the hair from her eyes and gazed deeply at her.

"If you don't want to follow" he said, softly and only to her, "I won't blame you. I know that my way is pretty frightening to you. So come with us and stay behind at the same time. I won't push you in any way...."

"......thank you...." Colleen said. Amidst the cheering and celebration of rage and newf ound bloodlust in the men, a stranger had managed to penetrate their perimeter and was soon discovered by Ramone, the only one not distracted by his own antics. He stood up and glared across the long clearing to the aft of the intact deck.

"Who the hell're you!?" he called. The cheering stopped and all heads in hoods quickly jerked in Ramone's glaring direction. There, upon a rock where salty water drooled out from a natural spring, stood Sally 'Steel Rope' Morganna, complete with two loops of her thick steel ropes tied behind her in a bow around her thick waist. She had changed her former habit into a more fitting dress for a girl of her mighty stance. Her sleeves were ripped and her arms were fully, boastfully presented. Her lower skirt had been fashioned into tight pants that showed off her powerful, oak-hard legs and black climbing boots were on her feet. She was grinning with her arms crossed, a haughty and arrogant pose, glancing around at the working crew.

"Well, well" she began, moving her hands to her thick, powerful hips. "This is what I was trying to find, here. I'm glad I got lost!" She leaped from the rocks to the middle of the deck. The ruined wood creaked under her pressure and weight, which she smiled at. Ramone began removing his glove. The buzzing of battle-insects became audible from within his body. "Calm down, here" Sally said, brushing both hands at him in dejection. "No one's here to start a fight, 'kay? I wanna join you, here!"

"......really?" Ramone said as he tightened his glove. "Have you ever killed anyone?"

"Who do you think I am?" Sally asked. "You're looking at the former queen of the North. The terror of the calm South! I've been wreaking havoc on the world since I was born, crushing men left and right, breaking bones and bodies as easily as I can break the ground with my steel rope 'Shimenawa', and I never flinch when I'm fighting!"

"Is that so?" Ramone said. With a calm turn around and a cross of his arms to the sea, he spoke. "Pick up some lumber and start lending a hand. We're stuck here for the next month while the pose sets and we need a ship before then. If you put forth enough effort I'll give you a position in the crew. Otherwise, once we're out to sea, I'll see just how much I can make you flinch." Ramone turned around with a millipede slithering into his eye from his mouth. Sally glared and smiled right at him, then stomped across the deck and picked up two huge loads of lumber in her muscular arms. Ramone sat on the broken bowsprit as the tides emptied out the swamp and revealed the black sloshing, salty death of land underneath, a moving and living moss that reached its short feelers straight upwards in the dark, gray sky light.

"Ggggggg" Ramone growled with a mad smile. "The seas are quaking already. The world's still afraid of ghosts, I hope....!"

And thus the 'Killer Ghost' Pirate were rebuilt. Their flag was remodeled to refit their rebirth, the second time they were cast to sea with renewed vigor and hope. This flag was of a stern and serious, realistic skull pierced through the cranium from below with a spear. Crawling along the skull's head was a halo of centipedes and a Buddhist third-eye cockroach situated between the two angry eye holes. The lower jaw of the skull was missing. A dark and mysterious flag for the Grand Line's future masters of horror and fear......

The Buster Pirates ship was already trenched free of the swamp. Sail was set for the next day.....